The Crimean War полностью

With every passing day even its central avenues became more empty and gloomy – it looked like a town that had been destroyed by an earthquake. Ekaterinskaia Street, which in May had still been a lively and handsome thoroughfare, was now, in July, deserted and destroyed. Neither on it nor on the boulevard would one see a female face, nor any person walking freely any more; only solemn groups of troops … . On every face there was the same sad expression of tiredness and foreboding. There was no point going into town: nowhere did one hear the sound of joy, nowhere did one find any amusement.

In Tolstoy’s ‘Sevastopol in August’, a story based on true events and characters, a soldier at the River Belbek asks another who has just arrived from the besieged town whether his room there is still in one piece. ‘My dear fellow,’ the other one replies, ‘the building was shelled to kingdom come ages ago. You won’t recognize Sevastopol now; there’s not a single woman left in the place, no taverns, no brass bands; the last pub closed down yesterday. It’s about as cheerful as a morgue.’¹²

It was not only civilians who were abandoning Sevastopol. Soldiers were deserting in growing numbers during the summer months. Those who ran away to the allies claimed that desertion was a mass phenomenon, and this is supported by the fragmentary figures and communications of the Russian military authorities. There was a report in August, for example, that the number of desertions had ‘dramatically increased’ since June, especially among those reserve troops who were called up to the Crimea: a hundred men had run away from the 15th Reserve Infantry Division, as had three out of every four reinforcements sent from the Warsaw Military District. From Sevastopol itself, around twenty soldiers went missing every day, mostly during sorties or bombardments, when they were not so closely watched by their commanding officers. According to the French, who received a steady flow of deserters in the summer months, the main reason the men gave for their desertion was that they had been given virtually no food, or only rotten meat, to eat. There were various rumours of a mutiny by some of the reservists in the Sevastopol garrison during the first week of August, though the uprising was brutally put down and all evidence of it suppressed by the Russians. ‘There has been a report that one hundred Russian soldiers have been shot by a sentence of Court Martial in the Town for Mutiny,’ Henry Clifford wrote to his father shortly afterwards. Several regiments were broken up and put in the reserve because they had become unreliable.¹³

Realizing that Sevastopol could not withstand the siege for much longer, the Tsar ordered Gorchakov to launch one last attempt to break the ring of allied troops. Gorchakov was doubtful that it could be done. An offensive ‘against an enemy superior in numbers and entrenched in such solid positions would be folly’, the commander-in-chief reasoned. But the Tsar insisted that something should be done: he was looking for a way to end the war on terms acceptable to Russia’s national honour and integrity, and needed a military success to begin peace talks with the British and the French from a stronger position. Sending three of his reserve divisions to the Crimea, Alexander bombarded Gorchakov with instructions to attack (though not suggesting where) before the allies sent more troops, as he believed they were about to do. ‘I am convinced that we must go on the offensive,’ he wrote to Gorchakov on 30 July; ‘otherwise all the reinforcements I have sent to you, as has happened in the past, will be sucked into Sevastopol, that bottomless pit.’¹⁴

The only line of action that Gorchakov believed had any chance of success was an attack on the French and Sardinian positions on the Chernaia river. By ‘capturing the enemy’s watering places, it might be possible to threaten his flank and limit his attacks on Sevastopol, maybe opening the way for further advantageous operations’, he wrote to the Tsar. ‘But we should not deceive ourselves, for there is little hope of success in such an initiative.’ Alexander would not listen to Gorchakov’s reservations. On 3 August he wrote to him again: ‘Your daily losses in Sevastopol underline what I have told you many times before in my letters – the necessity to do something decisive to end this frightful massacre [the Tsar’s italics].’ Alexander knew that Gorchakov was essentially a courtier, an acolyte of the cautious Paskevich, and suspected that he was reluctant to take the responsibility for an offensive. He concluded his letter with the words: ‘I want a battle, but if you as commander-in-chief fear the liability, then convene a military council to take it for you.’¹⁵